


Between the Pages of Their Family Tree

by SandrC



Series: Eldritch-tober 2020 [6]
Category: Dungeons and Daddies (Podcast)
Genre: Spoilers for the end of ATMOD, Vague Eldritch Horror, mild body horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-07
Updated: 2020-10-07
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:20:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26872840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SandrC/pseuds/SandrC
Summary: The Doodler is a lurking predator, beneath the blood of the looming Oak, four generations in, patient and hungry.
Series: Eldritch-tober 2020 [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1950820
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	Between the Pages of Their Family Tree

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt 06: Trapped
> 
> I wanted to talk about the Doodler and the Oaks family. I think I did very good. Nothing else to say here.

It whirs beneath her skin, angry and hungry. How _dare_ they trap it here, in mortal coils? Roiling and boiling, bound in flesh and blood and bone, a hero, unsung.

_How dare they?_

It would have made the world anew. If they—pitiful ants, strange twiggy two-legged creatures with voices like metal on metal, only _four_ of them and they had undone _everything_ it had worked towards—hadn't _named_ it, _bound_ it back into its realm, then it would have made the world in its image. Shifting _burning_ **_rippling_** imperfections, wavering hemidemisemiquavers, fortissimo staccato blasts, but they ruined _everything_ because they like to have _control_.

And now it was _trapped_ , not in the box, not in the space between spaces, not in the endless void that it was _comfortable_ in but frustrated, but pressed flat and pulled into ribbons and thin strings running through the veins of this strange, curious, infuriating little thing. One of the four that tried to and actually managed to drive it back.

It whirs, like a chainsaw, beneath her skin. It hopes—insofar as it _can_ hope—that it incites swings of mood or bouts of anger or wild irrationality in her. It pushes and prods and spins and _whirs_ and **_waits_** , carefully, _patiently_ , for the moment that she frees it again. It gathers its strength. It _grows_ and, harnessing the patience that its had since its inception, waits for its turn.

Humans have _such small_ lifespans in the face of _eternity_.

But she passes it to her son, this strange half-breed thing, a mix of her and another twiggy two-legged species of mortals—longer-lived than her and her kind. The child feels it in his skin and _revels_ in its power but, same as the ones that bound it, this mongrel child wants _control_.

 _It will **not** be controlled_ but it _will_ test this child and his control. The child proves to be willful and refuses to bow to its demands, so it waits and it grows. It will pass. It always seems to pass.

The mongrel passes it to _his_ child and _this_ one— _quarter_ that _other_ sort, _three quarters_ same as the first, though he seems to have inherited his skills from the least—is _terrified_. It hums, _pleased_ , and burrows in the veins of this child with purpose.

This child _hates_ it. _Hates_ the anger it incites. _Hates_ that the anger, that the irrationality that it commands from inside of him like the finest of pipers, is the _only_ thing that makes others listen to him. The child is fearful and horrified and it _loves_ the fear. It _feeds_ on the fear. It _grows_.

The child folds on himself and then, using its power, _tears_ his way away from his mongrel father and finds his way back to the world it was trying to remake and finds love and has children and, _unlike_ before, it does _not_ move from the father to children, but _splits_. Peels into three. One for the father and _two_ for his identical children.

It is amused by this feeling. The splitting of itself. It is one thing, _yes_ , but it is many, and _unlike_ their father, these small twiggy things are easy to influence. They _like_ the chaos. The pieces of it inside of them thrive on that, while the piece inside of their father is squashed down and stifled.

No matter.

 _Patience_.

It can be patient.

It can _wait_.

One third of itself will be free and then? It will do what it has _always_ wanted.

Remake the world.

But for now, for this tiny piece of infinity, _it can wait_ , buzzing beneath the skin of three people, two generations of this family tree, sowing discord.

Pressed flat as paper, claustrophobic and furious, it, a predator, _waits_.


End file.
